I was absolutely blown away by the projects presented on this panel, and am relieved there seems to be consensus that we need to have more discussions like this soon. Just when I think I’ve got my finger on the pulse of professional architecture and design work converging into virtual worlds, I’m introduced to several amazing projects I was only dimly aware of!
Luckily, I can cover all of these great projects with one link which contains an embedded video of our panel discussion, where each of the panelists gives a brief presentation about their work.
http://www.world2worlds.com/index.php/blogmenu/34-blog-entries/79-kim-smith-rissa-maidstone
Here is a summary from moderator Rissa Maidstone (Kim Smith in real life) from World2Worlds, without whom this event would not have happened:
“Reflecting upon the presentations and discussions given by the prestigious panel below, a few things occurred to me:
- Conceptual designs are being tested in Second Life and have resulted in significant cost savings to the engineers, architects and planners.
- The Second Life developer community is employing the same management tools that those of us who’ve worked in the engineering/architectural industry do for planning, scheduling, budget, resource management and manpower allocation.
- Community involvement programs and planning meetings are being or have been developed for specific physical world projects using the Second Life platform.
- There are ongoing technical issues that need to be dealt with through Linden Lab or third party application development.
Panelists included:
- Terry Beaubois (SL-Tab Scott) Creative Research Lab, Montana State University; http://wordpress.com/tag/terry-beaubois/
- Dr. Cristina Lopes (SL-Diva Canto), Dept. of Informatics, UC Irvine; http://www.ics.uci.edu/faculty/profiles/view_faculty.php?ucinetid=lopes
- Eric Gordon (SL-Boston Borst), Department of Visual and Media Arts, Emerson College, Hub2 http://hub2.org; http://digitallyceum.org;
- Jon Brouchoud (SL-Keystone Bouchard), Crescendo Design, Studio Wikitecture; http://crescendodesign.com/wikitectureqt; http://studiowikitecture.wordpress.com/;
- Ron Blechner (SL-Hiro Pendragon), Involve! http://www.involve3d.com/.
